Samsung has begun rolling 1Gb DDR 2 SDRAM chips off its 80nm production lines in volume, the company said today. The South Korean giant claimed it's the first memory maker to do so, five months after it began mass-producing the first 80nm 512Mb part.

The good news for memory module manufacturers is that the 1Gb chip's barely bigger than a 512Mb part fabbed at 90nm and 30 per cent smaller than a 90nm 1Gb part, Samsung said.

Right now, though, buyers favour cheaper, lower-capacity chips. According to Gartner market research cited by Samsung, 1Gb DRAM chips account of eight per cent of world memory chip shipments. However, that figure is expected to rise to 36 per cent by 2008. ®